OA-6, previously known as Orbital-6, is the sixth flight of the

Orbital ATK Orbital ATK Inc. was an American aerospace manufacturer and defense industry company. It was formed in February 9, 2015 from the merger of Orbital Sciences Corporation and parts of Alliant Techsystems (ATK). Orbital ATK designed, built, and de ...

uncrewed resupply spacecraft Uncrewed spacecraft or robotic spacecraft are spacecraft without people on board. Uncrewed spacecraft may have varying levels of autonomy from human input, such as remote control, or remote guidance. They may also be autonomous, in which they ...

Cygnus and its fifth flight to the

International Space Station The International Space Station (ISS) is a large space station that was Assembly of the International Space Station, assembled and is maintained in low Earth orbit by a collaboration of five space agencies and their contractors: NASA (United ...

under the

Commercial Resupply Services Commercial Resupply Services (CRS) are a series of flights awarded by NASA for the delivery of cargo and supplies to the International Space Station (ISS) on commercially operated spacecraft. The first phase of CRS contracts (CRS-1) were sign ...

(CRS) contract with

NASA The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA ) is an independent agencies of the United States government, independent agency of the federal government of the United States, US federal government responsible for the United States ...

. The mission launched on 23 March 2016 at 03:05:52

UTC Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communica ...

. The Cygnus spacecraft for this mission is named the S.S. ''Rick Husband'' in honor of astronaut

Rick Husband Richard Douglas Husband (July 12, 1957 – February 1, 2003) was an American astronaut and fighter pilot. He traveled into space twice: as pilot of STS-96 and commander of STS-107. Husband and the rest of the crew of STS-107 were killed whe ...

History

The first COTS demonstration mission with a Cygnus concluded successfully in September 2013 and Orbital commenced operational ISS cargo missions under the Commercial Resupply Service (CRS) program with two missions in 2014. However, the third operational mission,

Cygnus Orb-3 Orbital-3, also known as Orb-3, was an attempted flight of Cygnus, an automated cargo spacecraft developed by United States–based company Orbital Sciences, on 28 October 2014. The mission was intended to launch at 22:22:38 UTC that evening. ...

, was unsuccessful due to

catastrophic failure A catastrophic failure is a sudden and total failure from which recovery is impossible. Catastrophic failures often lead to cascading systems failure. The term is most commonly used for structural failures, but has often been extended to many ot ...

of its Antares 130 launch vehicle. Orbital discontinued the

Antares 100 Antares (), known during early development as Taurus II, is an American expendable medium-lift launch vehicle developed and built by Orbital Sciences Corporation (later Orbital ATK and Northrop Grumman) with financial support from NASA ...

series in favor of the planned

Antares 200 Antares (), known during early development as Taurus II, is an American expendable medium-lift launch vehicle developed and built by Orbital Sciences Corporation (later Orbital ATK and Northrop Grumman) with financial support from NASA ...

, upgraded with newly built

RD-181 The RD-191 () is a high-performance single-combustion chamber rocket engine, developed in Russia and sold by Roscosmos. It is derived from the RD-180 dual-combustion chamber engine, which itself was derived in turn from the four-chamber RD-170 ( ...

first stage engines to provide greater payload performance and increased reliability. While the Antares 200 was under development in 2015–2016, the company contracted with

United Launch Alliance United Launch Alliance, LLC (ULA) is an American launch service provider formed in December 2006 as a joint venture between Lockheed Martin Space and Boeing Defense, Space & Security. The company designs, assembles, sells and launches rockets ...

(ULA) for the

Atlas V Atlas V is an expendable launch system and the fifth major version in the Atlas (rocket family), Atlas launch vehicle family. It was developed by Lockheed Martin and has been operated by United Launch Alliance (ULA) since 2006. Primarily used to ...

launch of

Cygnus OA-4 OA-4, previously known as Orbital-4, was the fourth successful flight of the Orbital ATK uncrewed resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its third flight to the International Space Station (ISS) under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-1) contract ...

, which occurred on 6 December 2015, to be followed by the Atlas V launch of Cygnus OA-6 on 23 March 2016. Future

launches of CRS OA-5 in August 2016 and CRS OA-7 in November 2016 would be on the new

Antares 230 Antares (), known during early development as Taurus II, is an American expendable medium-lift launch vehicle developed and built by Orbital Sciences Corporation (later Orbital ATK and Northrop Grumman) with financial support from NASA ...

. Together with CRS OA-6, these missions enabled Orbital ATK to cover their initial CRS contracted payload obligation. Production and integration of Cygnus spacecraft was performed in Dulles, Virginia. The Cygnus service module was mated with the pressurized cargo module at the launch site, and mission operations were conducted from control centers in

Dulles, Virginia Dulles ( ) is an unincorporated area in Loudoun County, Virginia, United States, and is part of the Washington metropolitan area. The headquarters of Northrop Grumman Innovation Systems and ODIN Technologies, as well as the former headquarters ...

and

Houston Houston ( ) is the List of cities in Texas by population, most populous city in the U.S. state of Texas and in the Southern United States. Located in Southeast Texas near Galveston Bay and the Gulf of Mexico, it is the county seat, seat of ...

Texas Texas ( , ; or ) is the most populous U.S. state, state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. It borders Louisiana to the east, Arkansas to the northeast, Oklahoma to the north, New Mexico to the we ...

Launch

On 23 March 2016 (UTC), Cygnus CRS OA-6 was successfully launched by the Atlas V into

low Earth orbit A low Earth orbit (LEO) is an geocentric orbit, orbit around Earth with a orbital period, period of 128 minutes or less (making at least 11.25 orbits per day) and an orbital eccentricity, eccentricity less than 0.25. Most of the artificial object ...

. During the flight, the rocket had a first-stage anomaly that led to shutdown of the first-stage engine approximately five seconds before anticipated. The anomaly forced the Centaur upper stage of the rocket to fire for approximately one minute longer than planned, using reserved fuel margin, but did not significantly impact payload orbital insertion. The preplanned deorbit burn successfully deorbited the stage, but not precisely within the designated location. The issue marked the first Atlas V anomaly in over eight years to be publicly acknowledged by ULA.

Spacecraft

Cygnus OA-6 is the fifth of ten flights by

under the

contract with

. This was the second flight of the Enhanced sized Cygnus PCM. The delay of the

NOAA The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA ) is an American scientific and regulatory agency charged with forecasting weather, monitoring oceanic and atmospheric conditions, charting the seas, conducting deep-sea exploratio ...

GOES-R GOES-16, formerly known as GOES-R before reaching geostationary orbit, is the first of the GOES-R series of Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellites (GOES) operated by NASA and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration& ...

satellite from March 2016 to October 2016 created this

launch opportunity for Cygnus OA-6 to be launched before

Cygnus OA-5 OA-5, previously known as Orbital-5, was the seventh planned flight of the Orbital Sciences' uncrewed resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its sixth flight to the International Space Station under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA ...

. The mission was launched on 23 March 2016. In keeping with an Orbital ATK tradition, this Cygnus spacecraft is named the S.S. ''

'' after the NASA astronaut who commanded the Space Shuttle ''Columbia'''s ill-fated

STS-107 STS-107 was the 113th flight of the Space Shuttle program, and the 28th(twenty eigth) and final flight of Space Shuttle ''Columbia''. The mission ended on the 1st of February 2003, with the Space Shuttle ''Columbia'' disaster which killed al ...

mission in 2003.

Manifest

Total weight of cargo: using Enhanced Cygnus. * Crew supplies: ** Crew care packages ** 169 Bulk overwrap bags of food ** 6 Bulk overwrap bags of U.S. food for Russian crew ** Hygiene towels for Russian crew ** Printer ink and paper * Vehicle hardware: ** Multiplexer-demultiplexer circuit cards ** Charcoal, brine and bacteria filters for ECLESS ** Water sampling kit ** Toilet inserts, urine receptacle with hose, toilet paper ** * Science and research: ** 20 Flock 2e'

CubeSat A CubeSat is a class of small satellite with a form factor of cubes. CubeSats have a mass of no more than per unit,, url=https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5418c831e4b0fa4ecac1bacd/t/5f24997b6deea10cc52bb016/1596234122437/CDS+REV14+2020-07-3 ...

s ** Human Research Program resupply ** ** METEOR * Computer resources: ** New ZBook laptop and printer ** 160 GB hard drive for IBM ThinkPad ** Canon XH camcorder, Ghost camera, Nikon cameras, 50 mm lens, USB card reader ** Assorted cables ** * EVA (Spacewalk) gear: ** Legs, boots, arms and hard upper torso for spacesuit ** Socket caddy assembly ** METOX canisters for

carbon dioxide removal Carbon dioxide removal (CDR) is a process in which carbon dioxide () is removed from the atmosphere by deliberate human activities and durably stored in geological, terrestrial, or ocean reservoirs, or in products.IPCC, 2021:Annex VII: Glossar ...

** Contamination detection kit

Saffire-1

Saffire-1 is a

test to study

flammability A combustible material is a material that can burn (i.e., sustain a flame) in air under certain conditions. A material is flammable if it ignites easily at ambient temperatures. In other words, a combustible material ignites with some effort a ...

and

fire Fire is the rapid oxidation of a fuel in the exothermic chemical process of combustion, releasing heat, light, and various reaction Product (chemistry), products. Flames, the most visible portion of the fire, are produced in the combustion re ...

propagation in space, using the CRS OA-6 after it has delivered cargo to the

. The spacecraft is fitted with various sensors and cameras to record data during what is expected to be a 20-minute fire, to determine how much fire resistance is needed in the ultra-light material used in the spacecraft and astronaut's gear. Cygnus OA-6 will later disintegrate as it enters the Earth's atmosphere.NASA to light large blaze in space as part of new fire safety experiment
AFP via

ABC News Online ABC News, also known as ABC News and Current Affairs, is a public news service produced by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. The service covers both local and world affairs, broadcasting both nationally as ABC News, and across the Asia- ...

, 16 March 2016

Other ORB projects

After this Cygnus OA-6 flight,

plans to launch two more Cygnus cargo missions in 2016:

on 6 July 2016 and

Cygnus OA-7 OA-7, previously known as Orbital-7, is the eighth flight of the Orbital ATK uncrewed resupply spacecraft Cygnus and its seventh flight to the International Space Station (ISS) under the Commercial Resupply Services contract with NASA. The m ...

on 30 December 2016. They will be followed by three flights from the extended contract:

Cygnus OA-8E OA-8E was the ninth flight of the Orbital ATK Cargo spacecraft, uncrewed resupply spacecraft Cygnus (spacecraft), Cygnus and its eighth flight to the International Space Station (ISS) under the Commercial Resupply Services (CRS-1) contract with ...

on 12 June 2017,

Cygnus OA-9E OA-9E was the tenth flight of the Cygnus, an uncrewed resupply spacecraft. The flight was launched by Orbital ATK (OA), which was purchased by Northrop Grumman during the mission. It was the ninth flight under the Commercial Resupply Services ...

later in 2017 and

Cygnus NG-10 NG-10,Overview - CRS-10 mission
Northrop Gru ...

in 2018. The schedules in early 2017 are dynamic, due to the first crewed commercial flights (

SpaceX Space Exploration Technologies Corp., commonly referred to as SpaceX, is an America, American space technology company headquartered at the SpaceX Starbase, Starbase development site in Starbase, Texas. Since its founding in 2002, the compa ...

Boeing The Boeing Company, or simply Boeing (), is an American multinational corporation that designs, manufactures, and sells airplanes, rotorcraft, rockets, satellites, and missiles worldwide. The company also provides leasing and product support s ...

) to ISS.

References

External links

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Cygnus 006 Cygnus (spacecraft) Spacecraft launched by Atlas rockets Spacecraft launched in 2016 Spacecraft which reentered in 2016 Supply vehicles for the International Space Station